Awarding of second phase of LRT contracts delayed to late 2018

The international construction consortiums vying for more than $3 billion worth of light-rail contracts in Ottawa will have several more months to prepare their bids, the city said this week.

Separate contracts to extend the east-west Confederation Line as well as the north-south Trillium Line are now expected to be awarded by the end of this year. Last summer, city staff said they expected to announce the preferred proponents for the two projects by mid-2018.

In a memo this week, the city said the extenionsion was requested by the bidders in order to “take a more detailed look at some project elements to adequately design and price
their bid submissions.”

City staff added that they do not expect the delay to prevent construction from starting in early 2019 as scheduled.

The $2.5-billion Confederation Line expansion will extend light rail to Moodie Drive in the west and Orléans in the east. The three prequalified consortiums are:

The Confederation Transit Group, comprised of Ferrovial, Colas and Tomlinson;

The Trillium Line will lengthen the original O-Train line farther south to the airport and into Riverside South at a cost of approximately $535 million. The prequalified consortiums for that project are: